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While the youth counterculture remains the most evocative and best-remembered symbol of the cultural ferment of the 1960s, the revolution that shook American business during those boom years has gone largely unremarked. In this fascinating and revealing new study, Thomas Frank shows how the youthful revolutionaries were joined - and even anticipated by - such unlikely allies as the advertising industry and the men's clothing business. In both areas, each having also been an important pillar of fifties conservatism, the utopian, complacent surface of postwar consumerism was smashed by a new breed of admen and manufacturers who openly addressed public distrust of their industries, who recognized the absurdity of consumer society, who made war on conformity, and who finally settled on youth rebellion and counterculture as the symbol of choice for their new marketing vision. The Conquest of Cool is a thorough history of advertising as well as an incisive commentary on the evolution of a peculiarly American sensibility, the pervasive co-optation that defines today's hip commercial culture. By studying the devices and institutions of co-optation rather than those of resistance, Frank offers a picture of the 1960s that differs dramatically from the accounts of youth rebellion and sell-out that have become so familiar over the years. The Conquest of Cool forsakes the stories of campus and bohemia to follow the Dodge Rebellion, chronicle the Pepsi Generation, and recount the Peacock Revolution - by so doing, it raises important new questions about the culture of that most celebrated and maligned decade.… (más)
La conquista de lo cool no sólo hace callar a viejos hippies canosos que recuerdan sus viajes en furgoneta Volkswagen convencidos de que fueron transgresores, sino que además vacuna al público contra el capitalismo moderno que está hoy por todas partes, incluso en estas páginas. ( )
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
This is an old story in art, of course, genius vs. the organization. But the [car] customizers don't think of corporate bureaucracy quite the way your conventional artist does, whether he be William Gropper or Larry Rivers, namely, as a lot of small-minded Babbitts, venal enemies of culture, etc. They just think of the big companies as part of the vast mass of adult America, sclerotic from years of just being too old, whose rules and ideas weigh down upon Youth like a vast, bloated sac.
--Tom Wolfe, "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby," 1963
We're young too.
And we're on your side.
We know it's a tough race.
And we want you to win.
--Advertisement for Love Cosmetics, Wells, Rich, Greene Agency, 1969
Dedicatoria
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
For Wendy
Primeras palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
For as long as America is torn by culture wars, the 1960s will remain the historical terrain of conflict.
Citas
Últimas palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
And we will have new generations of youth rebellion as certainly as we will have new generations of mufflers or toothpaste or footwear.
While the youth counterculture remains the most evocative and best-remembered symbol of the cultural ferment of the 1960s, the revolution that shook American business during those boom years has gone largely unremarked. In this fascinating and revealing new study, Thomas Frank shows how the youthful revolutionaries were joined - and even anticipated by - such unlikely allies as the advertising industry and the men's clothing business. In both areas, each having also been an important pillar of fifties conservatism, the utopian, complacent surface of postwar consumerism was smashed by a new breed of admen and manufacturers who openly addressed public distrust of their industries, who recognized the absurdity of consumer society, who made war on conformity, and who finally settled on youth rebellion and counterculture as the symbol of choice for their new marketing vision. The Conquest of Cool is a thorough history of advertising as well as an incisive commentary on the evolution of a peculiarly American sensibility, the pervasive co-optation that defines today's hip commercial culture. By studying the devices and institutions of co-optation rather than those of resistance, Frank offers a picture of the 1960s that differs dramatically from the accounts of youth rebellion and sell-out that have become so familiar over the years. The Conquest of Cool forsakes the stories of campus and bohemia to follow the Dodge Rebellion, chronicle the Pepsi Generation, and recount the Peacock Revolution - by so doing, it raises important new questions about the culture of that most celebrated and maligned decade.